A is for A Few More Follow-ups

Some things which have come out of recent acquisitions and/or donations or which have been covered here before one way or another, and all PVC, except the resin cats;

 

You may remember when we looked at fishermen a while ago, Chris sent a picture of his complete key-ring guy, equally converted to a stand-alone piece as my - suddenly incomplete - chap, well, I had another damaged one come in (far left), which I kept quiet about! And then a whole one . . . Phew!

Also on key-rings passim, this would appear to be the commonest figural key-ring out there, and I have had these three come in recently, one of which has been fully converted to standing piper, with the removal of his ring-loop and the addition of a base. He also seems to be an earlier one, with better paint?

Those poor cats are still for sale with their holes in their noses, a year after I first saw them in The Range, to be fair I think they are now greatly reduced, but FFS people! No one is going to buy damaged cats, no matter how cheap they are, put them out of their misery.

 

I had a version of the dragon Jon Attwood sent us, with the wings in a totally different pose, and hot-water (or transit) doesn't seem to be the explanation (the wing-root is too thick), so they must have either changed the mould for technical reasons, or had two different mould-tools?

I have, once or twice over the 15 years of the blog, mentioned the over-moulded badges of post-war Italy, and here are three versions of the paramilitary mechanised brigade of the Carabinieri, you can see how the three colours of PVC have been 'wealded' to the cloth underneath. These were obtained, as surplus, in about 1978?

F is for Follow-up - Remembrance Sunday

Which this is, all day! Brian Burke sent me some fascinating images yesterday, by way of a follow-up to the poppy post I left up yesterday morning, while waiting for my pick-up in the early hours, for onward transport to the toy show!

I think this is a lovely poppy! This (left) is an American one, and in Brian's own words;

 

"On the right UK, from some years ago when in the UK in October, on the left USA from two years ago. Hard to find here where Veterans Day is not the same meaning as UK and Poppies are sold by Veterans of Foreign Wars members (VFW Posts)"

 

I had no idea the American did them, albeit as a minority thing? And I love the little beady centre to the poppy, and the fact that it's got a more environmentally friendly wire stalk with green paper wrap, like those bunches of mushrooms, grapes or mini-baubles you can get for Christmas trees, flower arranging, cheese-boards &etc., and which are among the oldest surviving decorations still findable.

 

So many thanks to Brian for that speedy follow-up! I also think, Australia/NZ do them as well as Canada, are any of them different to the Haig Fund/British Legion ones, they must be, even if it's only the message in the centre?

And it's funny, I 'ummed & ahrred' about my last paragraph in the previous post, but decided - with everything else going on - to leave it in the post anyway, I do wear my heart on my sleeve, as well as a poppy on my breast, and subsequent events involving Tommy Yaxley-Lennon Robinson Wanker and his Right Wing mates attacking the Cenotaph (as Madame Cruella and the tabloid press, as good as invited them to) while the 'Left Wing' Ceasefire in Palestine march behaved itself elsewhere in London at the same time, only proved I was right to do so, that I was correct in speaking out.

The Left is right, and the Right is wrong, always has been, always will be . . . all of Human History is about the slow progress (oh so slow) of the Left, of tolerance, of liberal values, of science over 'belief', and the sacrifices in all wars are for that aim of a better world, not a worse one. In the last 15-odd years, the Global establishment as been dragging us into a worse world, and a bigger war is coming. Please, this day, of all days . . . Remember them.

A

R is for Remembrance

Those who've stuck with the Blog from the start will know there have been one or two false starts with other Blogs, one of which is still lying there dead, another was Other Collectables, a blog which was imported and subsumed by this one after about a year and a half, and 20-odd posts, to which I haven't added much since, although the idea is to have other collectables from time to time, and of which this could be seen as an addition.

A collection by default, and I'm sure many households in the UK (and Canada?) have this box, tub, tin or drawer somewhere on the premises? For those who don't know about 'Poppy Day', here in the UK, and Canada I believe, we commemorate our war dead, by wearing the Haig Fund poppies for a week or two leading-up to the nearest Sunday to the 11th Hour of the 11th of November.

 

Services of remembrance are held in most churches and/or at most war memorials, on the Sunday, for those who wish to join in, while more personal tributes can be undertaken in relative privacy away from (before or after) the organised activities, and small crosses can be left, wreaths &etc., which remain up until the end of November in some cases, while two-minutes silences are held nationwide at 11 a.m. on the 11th (of the 11th Month, the time and day the armistice came into effect, at the close of the First World War), whether before or after the Sunday.

 

These are the poppies we wear, they represent the poppies which thrived on the war-broken ground of Flanders fields and the mud of no-mans-land, as they always do on construction sites and spoil-heaps, to this day.

 

But having made your contribution, and worn your poppy, two things become pressing upon its disposal, one, you must have the morality to buy a new one next year, not reuse your old one, and two, there seems something disrespectful in throwing away something which represents our own dead ancestors - so in the box, tub, tin or drawer they go!

 

This enables the above picture, which shows the evolution of the Remembrance Poppy in my lifetime, with a heavy, felted-card one on the left, a bit like blotting-paper, but it didn't immediately disintegrate when it got wet (which was quite common back then), it comes with a long-stalked and quite thick 'stem'.

 

Then four sub-versions of the current one, the flower now in impressed cartridge-paper, first with a shorter, thinner stalk, then the addition of a piece of foliage, thirdly, a side-branch/catch was added to help keep it in the button-hole, and finally the side-branch then got remanufactured in heavier plastic as they had a tendency to pull-off

 

Alongside the final version is the all paper one which has been gaining usage in the last few years, and will probably become the norm, as we try to phase unnecessary plastics out of common use.

 

Top right I have doubled-up an old sun-faded pink one, something we used to do with the old ones when we were kids, you could get two or three under the button before it started threatening to pop-off, which this was, as I shot it, I think the two pieces of foliage were one too many!

The four stalks, oldest on the left, current on the right, the message in the centre of the button changed from Haig Fund to Poppy Appeal sometime in the 1990's I think, and the whole exercise is to raise money for the British (or Canadian) Legion, a charity which supports ex-servicemen, and provides social venues open to the whole community, but specifically aimed at ex-servicemen.

The oldest and newest on the left, with two versions of the all-paper one on the right, a selection is provided at each collection stand/table (often manned by ex-servicemen or their widows), and here we have one with a sticky patch and the other to be pinned-through with the dress-makers pins provided.

Other poppies exist, I have a huge eight or ten-inch lump of polyethylene vehicle-badge somewhere, which were common for a while around the turn of the century, attached to the radiator with a cable-tie (mine was on my Cittrowaan, a BX19 GTI RocketShip!), and they are still available I think, but the famous 'reserve' of the British has rather rendered them a bit naff and/or show-off'y, and due to their cost, people assume the owners are reusing them every year - shock horror! Also, the changing design ethic of motor-vehicles means more and more of them have nowhere to locate the poppy!

They were originally silk, and hand-made by disabled veterans, and there must have been other designs over the decades between 1919'ish and the 1970's when my felted big-boy was made and procured, probably compulsorily at school! But if you chose to collect them, I'm sure you could have years of fun tracking them all down?

 

A lot of the officers wives' used to have jewelled-silver broaches from Garrards, but they knew to wear them on their dress or blouse and make sure they had a fresh Haig on their coat or jacket, and you can get the enamelled 'pins' from the sellers every year, if you are a pin-head - what pin-badge collectors call themselves!

We'll be at the Sandown Park toy fair today, and at 11 a.m., there will be two minutes silence, wherever you are, please remember them, because they died for a better world, not the intolerant fascist one Rishi and Cruella are trying to create. Not the illiterately idiotic one Truss nearly foisted on us, and not the murderously immature one, Boris and eye-test-man ran for nearly two years, but then . . . none of them have served five minutes in the forces, yet they've all gone down to Lullworth, Warminster or somewhere, to drive a tank!

F is for Found Objects - Six of . . . It's Stick!

You'll be glad to hear! Even I was getting sick of the title thing! There was lots of other stuff 'found' or re-found over the last three years, and we'll be dipping into all sorts for years to come, but this is the last of the bitty-bits, and it's all fabric tonight!

 

A few things from the bedroom drawers which weren't in the mending or sewing boxes, including a plastic thimble from a Christmas cracker (Christmas again!), I've always thought actually using one was a recipe for a needle in the finger, and there's no sign it has been used!

 

Used to love this when we were kids, it's just a really tangible object you want to pick up and handle, marked 'Foreign', it'll be from post-war Japan, and you see them on evilBay with up to ten people, what's nice about it is that each person is made from a fine silk-fabric off-cut, some with their own patterns.

Dad's Borneo formation sign, sleeve badge, Mum must have sewn the poppers on, so it could be removed in the jungle, as it makes a nice upper-torso target! I was a baby at the time and totally unaware of the life & death connotations of everyday life!

 

Mum had this off-cut of fabric, again, probably from Heals or Habitat in Guildford, but it might have been from one of her friends, there was far more thrift back then, than today's throwaway culture, and this heavy material may have been some child's curtains?

Anyway, she had enough to make my Brother and I a cushion each, and I've always liked the jolly guardsmen in their orange and red uniforms, it's - like the dowel animal puppets in an earlier post of this sequence - very redolent of the 1970's design ethic, and you wonder if there may have been other colourways?

H is for Haha-Haha-Haha-HA!

Or; follow-up to Smash mashed powdered potato Martian Alien Robots!

I have an annoying habit of shooting a post (probably leaving it Picasa for an average of six months!), editing the images, maybe taking  a few more, doing the text/blurb, and then chucking it up on the Blog, trying to check for typo's and finally publishing it, then, and only then, I think "Ooh I wonder what's on eBay related to these?"!

And - imagining all the Loyal Readers have had the same thought, I then rush off to eBay and grab something I probably didn't really need, before any other bright-spark does . . . the other day, after publishing the Smash Martian pencil-tops, was one of those occasions!

And this is what I found! Aren't they lovely, I found some Marx stuff and a chunky bendy-toy too, but these were affordable! Small polystyrene badges of the robots as 'flats', with chrome-effect plating blue-on-white and silver-on-red and green, with a standard safety-pin heat-welded into the rear for attaching to clothing. No obvious maker - for Cadbury's Smash.

N is for Nostalgia - Badges!

OK, well, after a seven-day figure-fest, let's have something completely different with a bit of a nostalgia hit to boot, after all if we collect toys we already have an interest in juvenile popular culture!

Another of the magic drawers shot on the way to storage, it's where all the badges that come in with mixed-lots end-up, after the drawing-pins, building blocks, broken chalks & crayons, buttons, Lego, lumps of hairy, brown Plasticine, marbles, Meccano, and other detritus have been removed!

This might . . . I stress MIGHT . . . and only 'might' . . . be the only surviving example of the badges in this Giant Plastics Corp., set (third image down), but it may be from another source altogether! A photo-realistic (because it's a 1:1 photograph, as a print!) army badge, reproduced as a paper sticker. It's actually quite an unusual higher-function/rear echelon logistics/construction unit - ADSEC Wikipedia.

Figurals; A cat stamped from polished sheet steel (stainless), a relief-flat setter, a similar Tyrolean/Bavarian [very-]young couple stealing a kiss, the two dogs came from Bulgaria, while the rabbit is channeling both Miffi and Hello Kitty (or even the new Chi) but is none of those franchise's characters, but rather a generic; possibly a gum-ball machine prize?

Finally the National Children's Homes (NCH) crocodile/alligator in Santa suit is a teeny-tiny example of multiple-shot moulding, a technique akin to over-moulding, but with each colour laid side-by-side, originally; separately, increasingly now; at the same time.

Also figural, this is interesting both for being a motorcycle (speedway memento?) and being marked on the back with the Injection Moulder's logo, whom we last saw selling Thomas cord-pull helicopters here.

This is a lovely little thing, a simple pin-badge in pressed, tin-litho, not sure if the alphabet is Chinese or Japanese but I think the latter, and the equivalent of a 'penny toy'? The sort of thing 1960's or early '70's parents would buy a whole card of, and hand out as 'attendance' prizes to all the kids at a birthday party . . . "I'll be ya' best friend . . . "

Oh, if I had a decent sample of these I'd need a new Blog! Brass, die-cast alloy, plastic, card . . . stars, medallions, shields, name-plates, we all had several of these on our way through childhood, Sheriff, Deputy, Posse, Marshal, Fire Chief, Police, or here (in plastic) 'Special Agent' . . . where would a 20th Century adolescence have been without at least one of these?

I hate this creature with such a vengeance he's got 'air-pellet receptacle' written all over 'im! However, some, many, were taken in by the Disneyfication of the whole planet, so just for them . . .no, I'm not going to clean the little shit!

Look at his dimwittedness, shining, beacon-like from his fizzog, listen to his whining voice (it's there, in your head, right now! "Oooh! helloooo pluuu'tooo!"), wonder at his inordinate earning-potential, imagine my extra Google-traffic - whatever I say about the horrid, mawkishly-sentimental little fu . . . deep breath Hugh, deep breath . . . calm down; go and have a coffee!

At the other end of the badge spectrum from anthropomorphic plastic twats are these, given away by arms manufacturers, to adults, at defence shows! Heavy alloy, base-metal or pewter models of whichever killing-machine they are flogging that day, here we have a faux-gilded 105mm howitzer (presumably from BAE Systems) and an Oerlikon ship-defence auto-cannon.

I may have some more of these somewhere (tanks, helicopters and 'planes), I've had a lot of luck with the Farnborough Airshow over the years; Dad used to get us all-area tickets when the Tiger Moth was on display, while in the 2000's I was working as a chauffeur and a lot of our work was for BAE or their clients, so we were in and out, all day, for the whole gig and got given a lot of stuff.

 

At that level of corporate hospitality the stuff is given-away like rain, indeed; umbrellas (full size, posh ones) were another common freebie, leaving me and family possessing a lifetime's supply of them - I recently took half-a-dozen to charity! Once I had a party of Turks visiting Thames Water facilities for a whole week (8-seat V-Klass) and they left all their umbrellas with me and I struggled to give them all away! We (they - the rich and powerful) have killed the planet with this shite!

DC is for Thompson!

No . . . not Detective Comics but David Coupar Thomson, who took over his father's Charles Alexander & Company, renaming it DC Thompson in 1905, long before the other DC's rise to prominence in the 1930's, although the titles we're looking at here date from the late 1930's.

Of its many titles the most famous to those of us of a certain age and who maybe don't live on the Dundee doorstep are The Dandy and The Beano, and it is to those works of great literary merit we turn today, with help from Brian Berke, Jim (from Sandown), Royal Fail and the good burghers of Dundee!

Although - in Desperate Dan's case it's probably the good burgers of Dundee we should be investigating . . . ?

Minnie the Minx is a female clone of Dennis the Menace, although I don't know which came first, and yes, he predates the other annoying, eponymous clone by decades, she is modelled here for McDonalds Happy Meals in the UK. They both appeared in the Beano

Next to her is a metal Desperate Dan, whose home title was the Dandy . . . Dan-dy . . . geddit! Hay; don't blame this author, it was all puns in British comics! Made by Unicorn Miniatures, we saw their Dan Dare (but dare he eat a cow-pie?) figures, also from Mr. B, at the start of last month.

Minnie's a modern rendition and about 4" tall, while the Unicorn figurine is a tad above the standard 54mm at around 60-mil against the 'berserker', and if you think Dan's looking untroubled by the likelihood of a bayonet-wound, believe me; he's seen far greater dangers off in a trice, indeed I think larger blades have blunted just trying to shave him!

The other Dan in the right-hand image is a plastic figurine of unknown origin, he looks to be very similar to some of the Phidal stuff, whether they've ever tackled UK-specific licences I don't know, and equally he could be a specially commissioned cover-freebie/premium?

The label (dating the figurine (or license) to 2005) suggests the comic's ownership; could he be from the now defunct (or re-purposed) rides at Chessington, or the gift-shop thereof?

We also see a Desperate Dan club badge! There used to be badges for all sorts of kids things, I have Airfix and Corgi badges somewhere, and the Sword Blog (link) regularly passes on news of their badges?

A larger glazed-ceramic Desperate Dan with his 'cow pie' . . . take one whole cow, cover it in pastry, cook it! Simple really and the horns hold the crust up like singing blackbirds! Foreign readers have by this point given-up on the madness - I'm sure; but need to know a Desperate Dan storyline wasn't complete until he'd sat down with a cow-pie with potting-fork and trowel.

The storylines actually often started with his attempts to eat a cow-pie being interrupted, usually by a 'grown-up' giving some kids a hard time!

To the right we see a group shot of Brain's DC characters, with Dennis the Menace and Gnasher (his immaculately well-behaved little dog . . . NOT!) having a bath - as a bubble-bath dispenser, and another McDonalds Happy Meal toy of him causing mischief with a toy spider; a toy of a toy!

While I was awaiting the above to be sent, Jim gave me this in the big box, again I suspect a cover freebie, as it hasn't got any of the 'club' stuff of a send-away, so probably taped to the front of an issue?

Meanwhile a travel piece in the Metro or 'i' suggesting Dundee as a perfect weekend-break showed this, how cool is that; keep your bronze lord-this or nappy-emperor-that, Dundee has Desperate Dan striding across the main square with Dawg!

While Royal Fail put both comics on postage stamps back in 2012!

T is for Tony Tigers . . . They'rrre Grrrrrreat!

Obviously I've had the Kellogg's box out and while I was shooting the Magic Roundabout and knights I threw this together!

The badge is probably from the 1970's, but I don't know, the five Ashford Mouldings semi-flat Sports Tony's (there's a skier missing) were quite recent as was the Coach Tony; a larger box 'exclusive' from the 1st Monster Wrestlers in my Pocket promotion.

The one's I remember from our childhood were the little (probably R&L) model-kit Tony Tigers, but they are harder to find than most of the above!

F is for Follow-up - Previous Plunder Post

Chris knew exactly what they were, and I was wrong to plump for the Italian angle - it was a doughboy's large-pack, but right about the badge pin (phew!) . . .

 . . . and the most remarkable thing about this is it's similarity in material and execution to the WHW (Wintershilfswerk) stuff the enemy had been churning out for the previous eight or so years! Presumably the show moved around, so they may not be that rare, but a blank (as the other day's must be) is less common, and the purpose . . . precisely the same as a KHW (Kriegshilfswerk) token!

It throws new light on a whole box of those identical Bell composition figures too . . . ?

H is for Heilpflanzen Des WHW

A bit of a bitty post, but like yesterday's it gets them in the tag-list and adds to the 'whole' on that tag - which you can find under each post (specific to that post) or down the right hand column of this page (all, alphabetically).

Taken from recent acquisitions and Adrian's stall at Sandown Park recently it's a return to the Winterhilfswerk Abzeichen or 'winter-help-work tokens'; some of the earliest plastics in our hobby, although there are a few non-plastic ones today.

Here we see five of the 1942 Berlin Guard set issued by the Gau (regional authority) of Berlin with one of the Police figures from a 1940 issue; he still has his hanging cord - with this you could pin the token to your collar or lapel to prevent yourself being 'button-holed' by another fund-raiser/seller down the road or the next day.

The military set; it's funny we've looked at these before briefly I think, and I now have a full sample of the foot figures in storage, but even with this post we still haven't seen them all here, the half-track is still missing as is the two-man vignette setting-up a range-finder, and this stick-grenadier is broken, so we will return to these at least once more, one day!

This was actually issued by the Deutschen Roten Kreuzes (German Red Cross) in 1941 and titled 'Examples of the Armed Forces'. Also absent are a second, more streamlined submarine (which - having no bow-wave - may be from the question-mark set we looked at ages ago, with the KMS Hitler-like carrier) sand a motor-boat with troops in.

It can be seen that propellers suffer loss and here all three types are missing parts of propellers.

On the left is a few more from the above set which have come in over the last few years, a Heinkel Bomber (early version with open roof-gunner position) which seems to be missing its propellers, but may have been converted to take little clear discs - now missing? The paratrooper - who was the largest-scaled figure in the set at around 35mm - is one of my favourites; this is my second, for painting at some point. Also a badge of a German soldier from a set for which I don't know the details.

On the right are various oddments; The bisque trawler-man comes from the occupations set of 'Industrious Germans' issued in March 1939, it was one of the larger sets with 20 figures (I think we've looked at the coal-miner before?) and all were given a pin-broach fitting on the reverse, again for wearing as a 'badge of contribution'! An earlier, similar set of regional costumes from 1937 in the same style look like a technicolour take on the Commonwealth dancing dolls!

The terracotta plaque has no method of wearing and was a common meme in WHW's, there being various sets of buildings, people, shields etc in the material, while the base-metal dog with semi-precious stone eye was part of another series of similar tokens which included sets of 'Germanic Swords & Daggers' (1939) and ' Historical Tomahawks and Battle-axes (1940), they're from page one of the 'how to militarise a nation' book!

Finally a vulcanised-rubber (or ceramic - it's hard to tell after 80-odd years) chicken's head which may or may not be a WHW token and may or may not be meant as a pencil top?

Some close-ups; The four artillery pieces donated to the blog by Wouter Wyland, shot from the other side from last time! My two planes, head on, and another submarine. The Pak-36/7 is almost HO-gauge compatible (wheels are a bit close together due to the semi-flat nature of the sculpt) and has a cavity number '2' on its underside.

The Stuka is slightly smaller that the MPC-Minis one we've looked at before, and both examples in these images seem to have miss-moulded wing-tips. Unsurprising in a nascent technology, and most are well formed with little flash or other signs of production problems; a few of the ships are miss-registered down the mould-split/join-line though.

The badge looks like it could have been made yesterday, not by a regime consigned to history 72 years ago! The glued-in sub-assemblies of the Stuka dive-bomber - if you invent polystyrene you have to invent polystyrene cement! - which has run up the sides of the fuselage, just as it would on my Airfix Boulton-Paul Defiant 30-odd years later; Doh!

T is for Toys of Toy People from Toytown

I've got all the pictures in the wrong order, so this will jump back and forwards but it's a post of bits and bobs anyway, so we'll press on. I have mentioned the origins of the 'Golly' moniker before, so to recap, I'll copy the entry from the abbreviations page, which I hope sums it up succinctly without causing offence...

Golliwogg/s - Ghul/s Working on Government Service (led to; 'Wogs', a now extremely derogatory nickname for Egyptian natives employed on British government service in the 1800's, which then gained wider use as a general racist/racially-derived slur word)
Golly / Gollie - See; Golliwogg/s

However, it is the only word we have to work with, and when it comes to Robinson's (Jams and Preserves), a sort of 'pax' was called on it's use due to the fame of the brands logo use, and the fact that Robinson's never used him in a negative context...not that most of the thousands of other 'Golly' products, books and soft toys did...Enid Blighton's (sometimes bad Golly) being the exception rather than the rule!

Adrian had this on his table back in the summer and I shot it when I had the chance, it was empty, but I had an idea I'd seen the HFC label before somewhere, without even noticing the image between the jar and the orange above, but that'll have to wait 'till the end of the post...

...in the meantime, the above shot shows some of the larger Marx (UK) figures (which may or may not have been supplied to Codeg / Cowan de Groot?), the two to the right have been paint-stripped, probably by Ron Good of Good Soldiers who casts them in metal and sells them in sets, in red gift boxes, like old Britians! I'm not even sure they're not from two Marx series, as Big Ears seems a tad too large?

Below them, are some finger-puppets, possibly from Christmas Crackers? But unknown in the provenance department and could just as easily be from a pocket-money craft set. Litho-printed paper faces glued to a felt loop, which on some provides the hat or other detail.

Back to Marx (UK) the upper-shot here is of a figure also from the above set (sets?), but which was languishing in the 'Unknown, probably Blue Box' box for years due to his similarity to other Blue Box (or Blue Box-like!) figures that follow the Marx (US) Disney production. It is actually (I assume) Mr. Bear; husband to the Mrs. Bear finger puppet above.

Below him and we're back to the top...where I'd recognised the HFC from; a bit of a disappointment, but it was illustrated on the lid, and pretending to be a Golly Badge (we think the link with Robinson's - established on the box - is tenuous, if not; non-existent) when it's actually a pencil sharpener! These were sold in newsagents and corner-shops back in the early 1980's although; note no date on the (C), a sure sign of everything being not as it seems in the licensing department?

This image was in my files, I suspect evilBay, but I'm not sure, so if you're the owner of the image, recognise it and want it removed, that's not a problem, eMail me...I rarely use downloaded images, and it's presented here for research purposes.

As a footnote; in 2001 Robinson's ceased to produce Golly memorabilia and he was dropped in 2002 with this press-release;

"We are retiring Golly because we found families with kids no longer necessarily knew about him. We are not bowing to political correctness, but like with any great make we have to move with the times"

M is for Memorabilia, Militaria and Medals

I was lucky enough to be shown this the other day, and took the opportunity to take a photograph of it to share with a wider audience. Thanks to Peter for letting me shoot it. It originated in a factory in Germany at the end of the last war (counting down to the next one - thanks for that Putin...you're so gay!), and was 'liberated' or shall we say 'confiscated' as illegal Nazi regalia in - the then newly de-Nazified - Germany!

The card is original and I understand that each member of the unit in question took one as a memento, these cards were used in shop-windows as propaganda as much as anything else, and although it's been renumbered by a British hand, you can see the original German 1's with their long heads or serifs.

From the top left to the bottom right moving down then across they are;

1 - RAD [Reichsarbeitsdienst] Medal, awarded for four years service in the Labour Organisation, the reverse reads "Fur Treue Dienste in Reichs Arbeits Dienst"...for loyal service in the German labour service.

2 - NSKK [Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps] Motor Vehicle Drivers Badge, this would have been worn by servicemen as well as NSKK personnel as lots of military personnel had been taught to drive by the NSKK.

3 - Mother's Cross - Miniature, this was awarded each August 12th (the birthday of Hitler’s mother), with gold crosses (illustrated) being awarded for those women who had given birth to 8 [good Aryan] children, silver for 6 and bronze for 4. As a miniature it would have been worn as a broach.

4 - War Merit Cross, 1st class with swords, this was a military award for action deserving of award, but not for bravery (which would deserve an Iron Cross).

5 - Austrian Medal, awarded on entry into Austria (from Wikipedia; The medal, known as the "Anschluss medal", was awarded to all those Austrians who contributed to or participated in the annexation as well as the members of the Austrian NSDAP [Nazi Party]. It was also awarded to German State officials and members of the German Wehrmacht and SS who marched into Austria).

6 - War Merit Cross, 2nd Class with swords (see 4 for note).

7 - German Red Cross 'Social Welfare' Medal.

8 - Clasp or 'Bar' to the Iron Cross 2nd Class, this is the 'Prizen' size which is both smaller and rarer than the usual clasp and would have been worn with a WWI Iron Cross medal ribbon, below and coming from a tunic button.

9 - Iron Cross 2nd Class.

10 - Wound Badge 3rd class.

11 - War Merit Cross 1st class without swords, awarded sans-swords for civilian or rear-echelon acts.

12 - Narvik Shield [Narvikschild], awarded for service in the Norway campaign in 1940.

13 - West Wall Medal, the obverse reads "Für Arbeit zum Schutze Deutschlands" (For work for the protection (or defence) of Germany) and it was awarded for work on the Siegfried Line in 1939/40.

14 - Crimean Shield [Krimschild], awarded to troops under the command of Erich von Manstein who captured the Crimea region, very common medal, with over 250,000 issued.

15 - War Merit Medal, the lowest award in the series that includes 11, 6 and 4 above. The medal replaced the second class - without swords - awards as so many were being issued and would go to someone like a factory worker who exceeded production targets or something like that.

The cut down the middle of the card presumably has more to do with the dimensions of  a British large-pack circa 1945, than anything in the factory which made these, the location/identity of which is unknown. I told Peter the Mothers Cross was probably for losing a child in the war...how wrong could I have been!

B is for Belt Buckles

A is for Ah!...Summer Grasses...

...all that remains of the dreams of soldiers.

Things I've worn or been entitled to wear over the years - of a now distant youth!. With the exception of the two flaming sword patches which I swapped with a guy called Eddie from the 502nd Infantry at Clay Alley in the US sector when we went on a rappelling (abseiling out of the old UH1 Hueys) course down there. The Green '1' flash was issued to a higher command I was once a part of but years after I'd left the army and the German national flash came off the Bundeswehr surplus shirts we used to wear in the field because our WWII pattern woollen things were bloody awful!

The red '28' and the brass plate next to it are from the 'Old Guard' and are based on Wellingtonian uniforms of the Peninsular and Waterloo periods (when we explained to the French politely - to begin with - that we wouldn't be driving on the wrong side of the road!).

There is also a pre-'Royal' Hampshire cap-badge, we weren't supposed to wear them, but as they shined-up far better than the Hong Kong produced 'stay bright' a blind-eye tended to be turned toward them, likewise - once I was cross-posted to the Glosters I got hold of gunmetal front and back badges at the earliest opportunity!

The little red square is all that remains of my 'A' company sweatshirt!

P is for Parachute and Special Force Insignia

R is for Russian Cap and Lapel Stars